BAGHDAD — When a middle-aged mother took a taxi alone from Baghdad to
Nasiriyah, about 200 miles south, earlier this year, her 20-year-old
driver stopped on the
way, pulled her to the side of the road and raped her. And that began a
telling
legal struggle.

“She is not a simple case,” says Hanaa Edwar, head of the Iraqi rights-based Al-Amal Association,
established in Baghdad after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

“She came from an affluent family, held a professional job, and told her family about the rape. They had
the police arrest the driver,” Edwar says. “Then she came to us for legal help. She said, ‘I want my rights
back, and what he has done to me, he will do to others. I want this perpetrator punished.'”

The rape victim lost her case. “The judge had a male mentality. They
think you should not make a
scandal but be silent. He prompted the accused with questions like, ‘You
did this when you were drunk — yes?’ This is how they intimidate,”
Edwar said. “Now we are making an appeal.”

The Al-Amal Association is one of a handful of women’s advocates in Iraq fighting for female equality in
marriage and divorce and opposing a draconian penal code that favors perpetrators of domestic
abuse and of honor killings within households.

According to United Nations statistics, one in five women from 15 to 49 years old has suffered physical
violence at the hands of her husband. “The real numbers are likely higher,” says UNDP. “Reporting of
gender-based violence cases is generally low, as women fear social stigmatization and lack confidence
that authorities will investigate complaints.”

“The deterioration of security has promoted a rise in tribal customs and religiously inflected political
extremism, which have had a deleterious effect on women’s rights both inside and outside the home,”
says a Human Rights Watch report published this year. “Iraq’s penal code considers ‘honorable motive’
to be a mitigating factor in crimes including murder. The code also gives husbands a legal right to
discipline their wives.

“For Iraqi women, who enjoyed some of the highest level of rights protection and social participation in
the region before 1991, these have been heavy blows.”

After Hussein’s overthrow in 2003, religious authorities’ attempts to replace the inequitable personal
status law with Shariah law were successfully fought off by female advocates. However, Article 41 in the
new Iraqi constitution has again introduced family law for religious interpretation by different sects.

Al-Amal’s Hanaa Edwar explains the new reality. “There is a lot of marriage and divorce that takes place
outside of the court. While the law says 15 years is the minimum age for boys and girls to marry with
the consent of their fathers and a judge, those under 15 years are marrying outside the court. Religious
men will take about 200 dollars for it.”

“The war has raised the violence in the state,” says Sundus Hasan, director of the Woman’s Leadership
Institute (WLI). “When there is a war, it always reflects on the people and families.

“Before 2003 every family sent all to schools,” she says. “Now everyone has to make sure about
protection for girls to go to school. Sometimes it costs too much. That is why early marriage is a new
phenomenon in Iraq — with girls at 10 or 12 years old. The legal age is 18 years old, but nobody
respects the law.”

Hasan, who has been personally threatened by militias for her advocacy work, lost a good friend who
was kidnapped and raped. “When her family paid her ransom, she returned home and called me. ‘I am
dying,’ she said. I told her to go to sleep, that everything would be okay. But the next day when her
family found her, she had killed herself in her room. I feel certain that when she returned she saw
sadness in the eyes of her husband and family. I am sure she saw herself in the same light.”

WLI is working to integrate critical international treaties like the Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) — of which Iraq is a signatory — into Iraqi legislation and with
others to push through a draft law against gender-based violence.

A positive starting point is the 25 percent quota for female parliamentarians. However, Hasan says, the
Ministry of Women’s Affairs is very weak, and there are only two females ministerial posts out of 48,
counting the state ministries. “Before there were six, then four, now two. It’s going the wrong way.”

Amnesty International warns, “Even if greater stability and peace return soon to Iraq, levels of violence
against women may remain high if the authorities continue to allow men to kill and maim women with
impunity and if gender segregation and discrimination against women become further entrenched.”